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Morton Marcus: Which of us has not in his ambitious days dreamed of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough and choppy enough to fit the soul's lyrical movements, the undulations of reverie, the

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jolts of consciousness. Good evening, everybody. This is Mort Marcus, and this is The Poetry Show, KUSP 88.9 on your FM dial serving Santa Cruz, Salinas, Monterey, and Big Sur on this Easter night 1977.

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Tonight, the show introduced by that comment by Charles Baudelaire introduces to you the subject, which is the prose poem. And tonight, I have got an old friend and a new friend on the show. The new friend is Beverly Acuff Momoi, who is in

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the major anthology of North American prose poetry, called, "The Party Train," which was released last year, and an old friend of the station's poet, prose poet herself, although also mostly lyrical poet, and that is Joan Zimmerman, whom

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many of you know who has been a hostess and host of the show and has been on with me before, as well as on her own. Welcome Beverly to the Poetry Show. Beverly, I can't hear you. I should hear you because you should be on- talk right into

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that. It is not working. Why is it not working? Because it's not in program. Try us now. Beverly Acuff Momoi: Can you hear me now? Morton Marcus: Yes, I can hear you now. You are in program.

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Okay. Beverly Acuff Momoi: I'm glad to be here. Morton Marcus: Thank you, someone turned that off and I can't figure out who it is, but I certainly am going to turn it

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on for everyone. Everything else is turned on, I can't figure out what that is. And there seemed to be a lot of buzzing and lurch ng in here but that's just maybe in my earphones. The other, welc me Joan, hello again. And this s- Joan is really the instigator

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of the show. She said I have ll these questions about the pr se poem, I've been writing pr se poetry, and I know Beverly. hy don't we get together and d a program on the prose poem? An I said, why not? Why haven't

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Joan Zimmerman: Well, I think especially, Mort, since you have been writing so many wonderful prose poems. Morton Marcus: My mother thanks you for that. Joan Zimmerman: But it's true. It's a form that really seems to

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be coming into its own and I've been really pleased to have had the chance to read a lot of the prose poems that you've been writing. So that's been very helpful. Morton Marcus: Well, Beverly, now, the prose poem really is

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not your major concern, is it, as a poet? Beverly Acuff Momoi: No, it's one of many forms for me. Morton Marcus: Yeah. Beverly Acuff Momoi: I love the the prose form for what I can do

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in it. But I- as I was telling Joan, I think I'm greedy. I like a lot of different forms as well, work in different forms. Morton Marcus: Your take on this is really the general take, which is, poets work slightly in the prose poem, I think, and

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they write regularly in the verse poem, and I think most of the prose poets who are identified as such in the United States today, for example, or even in the past have had that situation. They've not been predominantly a prose poet and

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just, if I can give a history really of the prose poem, and some of my thoughts on it to the people out there, what is this thing called a prose poem? It may even be enlightening to the person I'm doing the show for, which is really Joan. The first

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prose poet I ever came across was Su Tung-Po, the great Song Dynasty, poet, and statesman, etc. And he wrote several poems on temple walls that are still inscribed over there, and also on a Red Cliff in which he wrote one of the great Chinese verse

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poems on the great battle of Red Cliff. And he wrote two poems on the Red Cliff, I don't think I'm going to read them. But he said that prose poetry was extremely rhythmical prose, almost as rhythmical as poetry. What's interesting is that his prose

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poems are extremely imaginative. And even though he was mostly Buddhist and Taoist, they just really reach other realms and they really are moving towards a fairy world. And one of them the "Red Cliff Number Two" prose poem as he goes: "High over the

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banks on a moonlit night, over the Red Cliffs, and to the sea, all the vegetation transforms into chimerical animals." And then he sees a crane flying over in a black robe with white silk down its sides, very lazily flying into the moon. And he

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goes home very sad and realizing he cannot be part of that Red Cliff world. And he dreams of an old Taoist monk who smilingly comes to him in a black robe with white shoulders and says, "Did you enjoy a trip to Red Cliff?" And he says, "Oh, you

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were the crane!" And then he wakes up, and no one's there. But I mean, it's touching that other world, but I can't say that he doesn't do this in other poems because he does. He touches into another world in his other poems as well.

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Joan Zimmerman: Now, Mort, would it take long to read that poem? Morton Marcus: Longer than we have. Joan Zimmerman: Okay. Morton Marcus: Because it is rather- in the translation, it's

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rather long. I could read parts of it I guess. Joan Zimmerman: That would be helpful, I think. I mean, it would be to me. Morton Marcus: Okay, as I'm thumping around here, and it

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just so happens, I have it right here. The river raced along noisily, it's sheer banks rising a thousand feet. The mountains were very high, the moon small, the level of the water had fallen leaving boulders sticking

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out. How much time had passed since my last visit? I couldn't recognize them as the same river and hills. Tucking up my robe, I began to climb, picking my way along the steep embankment, pushing through tangled grass, straddling rocks the shape of

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tigers, clamoring over roots twisting like dragons. I pulled my way up to the eagle's precarious nest and looking down into the hidden holes of the river god. My two companions couldn't keep up with me. I gave a long, shrill woop, the trees

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and grass shook and swayed, the mountains rang, the valley echoed. A wind came up roiling the water, and I felt this chill of sadness, a shrinking fear. I knew with a shudder that I couldn't stay there any longer. I went back to my friends and

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got into the boat, and we turned it loose to drift with a current, contend to let it stop wherever it chose. The night was half over, and all around was deserted and still, when a lone crane appeared, cutting across the river from the east. Its

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wings looked like cartwheels, and it wore a black robe and a coat of white silk. With a long grading cry, it swooped over our boat and went off to the west. Soon afterwards, I left my friends and went to bed. I dreamt I saw a Taoist immortal

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in a feather robe come bouncing down the road past the foot of Ling Cao. He bowed to me and said, "Did you enjoy your outing to the Red Cliff?" I asked him his name but he looked down and didn't answer. "Ah, wait, of course. Now I know. Last evening

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flying over our boat and crying, that was you wasn't it?" He turned his head and laughed, and I woke up with a start. I opened the door and peered out but I could see no sign of him. And he's got beautiful- in the other one, he describes suddenly

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imagining his boat from high up. And he is like a leaf tossed on the current of the river. You know, he and his two friends riding in it. Just marvelous sense of things. He's one of my favorite Chinese poets anyway. Anyway, the big change it seems

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to me - and I think, Beverly, you know, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, and I don't want to go on too much my own - the big change happens for us in the West when Aloysius Bertrand, the Belgian poet, begins to write a series of poems, now

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listen to this, in 1831 evoking the sense of medieval Dijon, or medieval Burgundy, and a character by the name of Gaspard de la Nuit, and that is Gaspard of the Night and the medieval atmosphere of this city. It is a city filled with demons,

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fairies, and Gaspard himself has been called by a French critic "the prince of darkness personified." So you get this real romantic, Edgar Allan Poe-ish sense of the fantastic, the dark psyche. And this begins to inform the prose poem. The

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next prose poem in the line is, and he says in his letter describing it, the "Parisian Prowler" or "Spleen," - Charles Baudelaire, again, a man torn by this idea of the good side and the evil side, torn by the ideas of demons and romantic, you

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know, fantasy - he says that he follows the work of Aloysius Bartram, and of course, he knows the work of Edgar Allan Poe as well. And he is really the writer who then begins to influence everyone, I think, who writes the prose poem. And this

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idea of the dream, the fantasy, the dark side of the psyche, begins to take over and be the main method of discourse for the prose poem there afterwards. And after that you have Ivan Turgenev, a friend of Baudelaire's, the great Russian

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novelist; Arthur Rimbaud in "The Illuminations," which are a book of prose poems that also talk about that dichotomy. And on and on and on. What do you think of that Beverly? Beverly Acuff Momoi: Well, I'm less influenced by, although I'm

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aware of, the Western influences, that dream type of the dark side and probably I'm more in tune with the Eastern since my first introduction to the prose poem was through Basho and haibun. So there's a different sensibility there and

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a different orientation to the material. Why don't you talk about them for a few moments and tell us some what that orientation is, and you know, what you found in Basho and are maybe bringing into your work in English?

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Well, Basho is a 17th century Japanese poet and a lot of Western readers, I believe, know him, probably for the haiku. But he was a master of the haibun, which is a prose form. He wrote a series of prose pieces intermixed with haiku. And it's

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thought you can think of it as a travel journey. It was Oku no Hosomichi, which is the far- Morton Marcus: "Travels Into the Far North." Beverly Acuff Momoi: Yes, it's been translated a number of

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different ways, "Travels Into the Far North," "Travels Into the Northern Province." And it's journey poetry, I mean, it's about that inner journey using the external world, but not in a personal way, in that Japanese poetry you typically don't see

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the "I", that first person that you see so much in western poetry. So you explore the external world as a way of finding what's important, or a way of discovering things about yourself and about others.

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Morton Marcus: Have you brought any of that, any Basho? Beverly Acuff Momoi: Basho? Yeah, actually, I did. Joan Zimmerman: Beverly has a huge bag full of- Beverly Acuff Momoi: Everything. I didn't, you'll ask me to

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bring- to read something I didn't bring but- Morton Marcus: Well, then simply just say, no, I didn't. Beverly Acuff Momoi: But Basho I did, because he is one of my- the writers that I turned back to over and over.

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Morton Marcus: Why don't you, if you want, you know, read us some of this? And while she's looking at it, I should say that there are many translations of this poem. Some of them really excellent. Well, which one are you reading from? And which one

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do you prefer? Beverly Acuff Momoi: Well, this is a translation by Dorothy Breton. And she actually calls it a haiku journey. And then translates it as, "Basho's Narrow Road To A Far Province."

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I'm not sure I would go so far as to say it's a translation I prefer, but it's the one that I have and the one that's complete, I have excerpts. This is it from the middle. And it's an excerpt that's called:

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THE MOGAMI RIVER The Mogami River rises in the highlands of the far north. In its upper reaches here in Yamagata, there are some exceedingly dangerous rapids, such as "the Go Stones," where

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rocks are scattered about like black counters on a go board, and "the Peregrine Falcon," where the waters are as swift as a falcon's flight. Flowing north of Mount Itajiki, mentioned in an old poem, the Mogami finally empties into the sea at

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Sakata./With mountains hanging over us on either side, we glided through thick foliage as we descended the river. Normally used for transporting rice, our craft was apparently called a "rice boat," not far from where we could see the white threads

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of Shiraito Falls through spaces in the greenery stood Sennin-do, "the Hall of the Mountain Wizard," poised on the edges of the waters./The river was swollen with the rains and our journey was a perilous one.

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Gathering as it goes/all the rains of June/how swiftly the Mogami flows! And those last three lines were the Haiku. Joan Zimmerman: So Beverly, when you started writing prose poetry

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then were you doing it somewhat in imitation of Basho or how are you adapting his form? Beverly Acuff Momoi: I wasn't doing an imitation because actually, mine's quite different. But I was remembering

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that juxtaposition of prose, and very brief poetry where the focus was on just a few, a few words at the very end. And that sense that they formed the whole, that you couldn't separate one from the other without losing something in the

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process. And- Joan Zimmerman: And if you'd written it entirely as prose, it would not have had the same impact, if you'd written it as a sequence of haiku, it would not have had the same impact?

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Beverly Acuff Momoi: I don't believe so, it certainly wouldn't have for me. One informs the other. Now, what I've noticed in a lot of Western writers of haibun, combined with haiku, is that we tend to explain too much in our prose,

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it tends to be didactic. And I know I wrote a series of pieces, and what I realized is there was a fear that the reader wouldn't get it. And so I kept putting more into the prose, as opposed to letting it be part and stand on its own, and then letting the

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brief poem stand on its own. Morton Marcus: I think that's what we all have to do is, you know, we sort of have to trust the reader more and more. I don't know whether I have gotten to that point myself. But it's

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also the- the sense that what Chinese and Japanese poetry do give us is the sense of suggestion. And they really try to take out as much as they can. I guess the sonnet form for the Chinese is called a four line end-stop, and only has fourteen,

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sixteen characters, four on each line. And that's the limitation as the seventeen syllables are for the haiku. So, I mean, they really are restricting themselves and they don't have room to moralize, they have to be able to suggest everything.

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And it's certainly something I think that all Western poets can learn. And I think it's a good thing that, you know, you brought that up. Beverly Acuff Momoi: But there's something else that's working in

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their poetry that is not as easily to bring into Western poetry and that's the context and that shared history of language. So, if you look at, within Japanese culture and in haiku, you have certain phrases that are repeated from one

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generation of poets to the next. And they carry- there is an assumption that you know that history and that you know those poems and those poets that have preceded, and so they carry that context through and I don't think in most of- I don't think

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it's a fair assumption to say that we have that same- we don't have that same shared context. Joan Zimmerman: We almost have the opposite because if we repeat in Western poetry it is often said to be a cliche, that

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we've taken some phrase that was very special when it was first used, and if we reuse it, we haven't earned it, we haven't added something to the language. So I think in the West, there's less of a tendency to have-

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Beverly Acuff Momoi: And even do you have the same shared history of that phrase? Morton Marcus: You see, I think we do. I really think we do. I think that what we're forgetting, and certainly this

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is not the case in Japanese, as is in Chinese, let's say. There is Mandarin, the Mandarin culture in Chinese that allows this repetition and this echoing to go on from one poet to another, so that a phrase used by one poet a thousand years

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after another, reminds who's reading this, other poets are reading this. And it's the same thing in the West. Now in Japan, the common people know the haiku artists, so that makes it different. Unfortunately, when we talk about the common people

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here in the West, you're right: They don't have the shared knowledge because they don't have the education, and now more and more, were finding that these allusions to Coleridge's poetry or Wordsworth or Keats' poetry are falling- I know on my

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students, college students, they have never read these things before in high school and they have no cultural knowledge at all going into poetry or any of the other arts, or even the history of the West. So in that way, you know, we really lose

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it. And it is more alive in Japanese culture because every school boy, every school girl knows these haiku and the stories of haiku artists, some from one hundred year period to the other. At any rate, let us go on here. So you did start

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writing haibun in the beginning? Beverly Acuff Momoi: Yes, and no, I'd say that I was probably, that was my first introduction to that whole idea of prose as poetry. But I didn't try to write that form exclusively, I

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just wrote prose pieces. And sometimes, there would be very brief poems at the end. But more often than not, there wouldn't be, but I started- it gave me a way to start thinking of prose as poetry, and not as fiction. I grew up in the South, which is a

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very storytelling culture. And so I had always thought of prose as story versus poetry. And so the haibun was that first idea that prose didn't have to be story in that sense of that narrative line. Or that you can then do variations on stories so

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it's not as tight a thread as a piece of fiction. And I think a lot of the prose poems that we see have a lot of story in them. And maybe that's the Western influence. Morton Marcus: Yeah, well, I think so but I also think that

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prose naturally leads you to narrative. And, to me, the tension that's going on is the language which you saw, you know, in Japanese poetry, and is the language of the poet which is very concentrated, very filled with figurative language,

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attempting to suggest more than it says, on one hand, and then you've got the prose in the other, which is straining and tugging against that, and wants to tell stories and not have lyrical moments. And I think what happens is, out of that

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tugging, you suddenly have this grotesque form erupt, and it just goes into totally new shapes, if you will, they continue this metaphor, and that becomes the prose poem. I think in the West, where there's been more and more of these written,

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that is why we have so much touching of the psyche, so much of the dream state that has been predominant, though, I'm not saying that's where it should be because there have been a lot of practitioners now who are breaking out of this and

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widening this, but I think that's where it was at first. And then, you know, the fact that it's coming out of the Romantic era in the West with the poets that I mentioned. But it is that tension all the time, that even wants you to start

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telling a story, and then stopping yourself, that creates a tension too. You say, no, this is not a story, this is poem. And so it suddenly goes off in very strange directions. I told them, what's in the introduction to that actually, Robert

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Alexander really liked my comment, that I felt that what I was doing was escaping from the tyranny of the line. And that gave me tremendous freedom, which I did. And I wrote Charlie Simic that, way before it ever came out here, and Charlie wrote

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back and he said, "No, that's way too simple. What's going on in the prose poem is that all boundaries are down, all the gates of the borders are down, and you can go in any direction and do anything you want. And you're not- you don't have

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preconceived notions that you have in any kind of verse poem that you're writing." And I thought, that really hit it. I was looking for that letter tonight, in fact, and just quote, the way the way he put it, it really, really hit it.

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And he said, you know, you can start an essay and you can tell a joke, and it can suddenly become a story, or you can start a story and become a joke. And there are several things which I think you know, Joan has even heard of mine that really

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started off as essays. And suddenly they just erupt like someone blowing a bubble with bubble gum, and they just take off. And they're just- they're not essays and they never were essays. And it's a breaking of form, you know, as well as the

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hopefully continuous [unidentified] language that I've loved about this so much. Why don't you read us some of your prose poetry, Bev? And let us see what's happened because I know that what I've read of yours in, "The Party Train,"

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deals with the whole Asian experience, but in a very contemporary political manner, which is a very interesting direction for it to take. Now, I don't know whether you were planning to read that but-

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Beverly Acuff Momoi: Are you talking about the Su Shi poem? Actually, I would like to read that one. It's one of my favorites. It's one that I despaired of ever getting published. I was thrilled when they accepted it because that

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meant it saw the light of day. Joan Zimmerman: And this is in, "The Party Train," which is a collection of North American prose poetry edited by Robert Alexander and Mark Vinz and-

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Morton Marcus: C.W. Truesdale. And it has been sold in all the bookstores in the county and is sold out. It has been reordered again and again, so that I don't think it's anywhere now except in, what is it the used bookstore?

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Joan Zimmerman: Logos. Morton Marcus: It's downstairs in Logos. Joan Zimmerman: But people could certainly order it in the bookstores. And it's a wonderful-

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Beverly Acuff Momoi: Yeah, let me just say that there are three really great collections of prose poetry in American prose and that is one, which I have here, a book that is no longer with us, called, "The Prose Poem," edited by Michael

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Benedict more than twenty years ago. I bring this out to show the people here I have it taped together, it is actually falling apart. It's an amazing collection by Michael Benedict, really a person who has pursued the prose poem, that came out

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more than twenty-five years ago. He tried to redo it. Finally, somehow this was taken away from him by the people at Oberlin College, David Young, and Stuart Freiburg who put out "Models of the Universe" around three years ago. And they reprinted a lot of

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the selection, but left out more than two thirds of it. And then put in contemporary American prose poets, though they have a European background here. And really, they put in all the poets who they think are the important American poets, which

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is something "Field" has been doing now for twenty years. They have selected the poets they think we should read, and either in "Field" or in the books they publish, they don't include anyone else. And so this is a very, very incorrect anthology

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because some of the people are called prose poets here, I think the only prose poems they ever wrote are in this volume. At the same time collecting from everyone in the country who would send into them, and also through dozens upon dozens of

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invitations, Robert Alexander, who did his PhD in the prose poem in history of American letters, Mark Vins, and C.W. Truesdale of New Rivers Press. I did what I think is by far in a way, the representative anthology of North American

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prose poetry. And that is what Beverly is in and she is going to read us from now again for you people out there who want to see some really interesting introductions by the three editors. It's called, "The Party Train, A Collection of North

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American Prose Poetry." And Beverly is going to read us from her selections right now. Joan Zimmerman: This poem is called: Beverly Acuff Momoi: IF SHE CAN'T HEAR YOU

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and it's for [cut-off] Calls it, a woman? They cheer. A woman can't be a leader. Yes, yes, she can. She takes the chalk from them and writes her name on their list. Then she takes the eraser to make sure it

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stays. Like young boys, the men of your country try to deny you. They make you into the other, tell your people you're not one of them, remind them your husband is British. Her permanent address is Oxford. If she wants to leave for a

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permanent address she can leave. People thinks she should be reunited with her family. When you see things with a cooler head, I think she did overdo things. Her ideas of democracy and freedom were out of touch with the real Burmese situation.

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You sit in your house of brick and shingle, refuse to leave your home country wait out the days of your life. How long can you continue to hear only the words of your own making? To see only your own reflection? To reach out and touch only memory?

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How long before their words are true? Before you truly are out of touch with the real Burmese? How long before you are no longer the mother of a young girl's dreams? Morton Marcus: And believe it or not, we have gone through a half

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an hour of this show. We're going to take a small musical break and we'll be right back. We only have one PSA tonight, so well if you wonder what you've been listening to, that was Beverly Acuff Momoi who was reading from her prose poetry

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and we are discussing the prose poem with her and Joan Zimmerman tonight. We will be back in a moment. Hello again, this is Mort Marcus and tonight we're doing a program on the prose poem. And when we come back two minutes,

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after I read a PSA, we're going to read different prose poets that sort of exemplify the range of the new form, if it is a form. But first, I'd like to announce on April eighth, on Tuesday, at the Bookshop Santa Cruz, the National Writers

00:38:03.160 - 00:38:17.740

Union's monthly reading this month will be Elizabeth Willis and Paul Hoover. Elizabeth Willis was born in the Mid-East and grew up mostly in the Midwest. Her public creations include, "Second Law," "The Human Abstract," and, "A

00:38:17.770 - 00:38:35.590

Maiden." She currently teaches at Cabrillo and she and her husband, Peter Gizzi, who is one of the poets in residence up at UCSC, were on the show a year ago. And she will be reading with Paul Hoover, who has been poet in residence at Columbia

00:38:35.590 - 00:38:55.750

College, Chicago since 1977. His poetry has appeared in The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Partisan Review, and is frequently in the Anthology of the Best American Poetry. He- where is it? Oh, it doesn't say. Well, there it is. In 1994, he

00:38:55.750 - 00:39:15.850

came out with an anthology himself called, "Post-Modern American Poetry," which is the most important collection to date of post-modernist verse, verse which includes language poetry, and the New York poetry and things like that. And so he

00:39:15.850 - 00:39:35.290

will be reading here with Elizabeth Willis on the eighth of April at 8pm, Bookshop Santa Cruz. Try to all make it as, of course, a wonderful series. And the following month, Joe Stroud will be reading there, so Elizabeth Willis, Paul Hoover

00:39:35.290 - 00:39:59.260

this time. We are listening to the piano work, and before that Piano Concerto by Maurice Ravel, "Reasoning," because Maurice Ravel's "Gaspard de la Nuit," was a very direct inspiration of the prose poems of Aloysius Bertrand who we talked about

00:39:59.260 - 00:40:17.110

before. So, that's the connection between our music tonight. Beverly, you suggested that we start to read other poets, why don't you just begin. Tell us who you're going to be reading, and we'll sort of go round robin, one poem each

00:40:17.110 - 00:40:33.920

person and say what we find interesting and different about their poems. Alright. Whoops, hold on, I'm sorry here. Beverly Acuff Momoi: I would like to read one of Simic's poems because I very much like his work. And this is from,

00:40:33.950 - 00:40:49.910

"Dime-store Alchemy," which is a series of prose pieces that began, or were inspired by the art of Joseph Cornell. And this particular piece is called: CHESSBOARD OF THE SOUL

00:40:51.130 - 00:41:06.640

Around the boxes, I can still hear Cornell mumble to himself. In the basement of the quiet house on Utopia Parkway, he's passing the hours by changing the positions of a few items, setting them in new positions relative to one another in a

00:41:06.640 - 00:41:27.130

box. At times, the move is no more than a tenth of an inch. At other times, he picks the object as one would a chest figure, and remains long motionless, lost in complicated deliberation. Many of the boxes make me think of those chess problems, in which

00:41:27.130 - 00:41:44.170

no more than six or seven figures are left on the board. The caption says, "white mates in two moves," but the solution escapes the closest scrutiny. As anyone who attempts to solve these problems knows, the first move is the key, and it's bound

00:41:44.170 - 00:41:59.200

to be an unlikely appearing move. I've often cut a chess problem from a newspaper and taped it to the wall by my bed, so that I may think about it first thing in the morning. And before turning off the lights at night. I've especially been

00:41:59.200 - 00:42:15.790

attracted to problems with minimum numbers of figures, the ones that resemble the ending of some long, complicated, and evenly fought game. It's the subtlety of two minds scheming that one aims to recover. At times, it may take months to

00:42:15.790 - 00:42:31.840

reach the solution. And a few instances, I was never able to solve the problem. The board and his figures remained as mysterious as ever. Unless there was an error in instructions or position or a misprint, there was no way in hell, that white

00:42:31.840 - 00:42:50.350

could mate in two moves. And yet, at some point, my need for a solution was replaced by the poetry of my continuous failure. The white queen remained where it was on the black square, and so did the other figures in the original places, eternally,

00:42:50.800 - 00:43:09.040

whenever I close my eyes. Morton Marcus: Yes, you were mentioning that before, that is the book on Joseph Cornell's unique three dimensional work. And that is really a book of criticism and poetry, very

00:43:09.040 - 00:43:25.150

uniquely put together by Charlie. It was one or two books before that, the name of which escapes me, that he won the Pulitzer Prize. And they're one-paragraph, sometimes two-paragraph prose poems, a small book with large type in

00:43:25.150 - 00:43:41.450

it, and some of the best, very esoteric, others of it not. But anyway, that really put the prose poem into the spotlight in the beginning of the 90s. Beverly Acuff Momoi: And what I like about this particular

00:43:41.750 - 00:44:02.030

collection is that will start somewhere, usually from a work of art, a piece of art, and winds up in a surprising place, or surprising to me. And I think it's an excellent illustration of what he was saying about where the prose poem can take

00:44:02.030 - 00:44:24.650

you about the fact that there are no- there is no limit, you can start one place and things are going along, and suddenly you find yourself in another. I very much like this collection. Morton Marcus: In the last year, he's been working on a book

00:44:24.650 - 00:44:43.430

about Buster Keaton. And I've sent him all of my material on Keaton, part of my taped history of film on Keaton. And I am just really interested in what he's going to do with all this because it's not going to come out anything like what anyone

00:44:43.430 - 00:44:56.810

ever saw, and I'm looking forward to it. He's been in England and he's now back and he's going very slow, but it'll be very interesting. I think it's gonna be very similar to the Cornell book, but maybe with even some new some new

00:44:56.810 - 00:45:01.650

wrinkles to it. Beverly Acuff Momoi: Very stimulating work as a poet to r ad his work. Morton Marcus: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

00:45:01.650 - 00:45:16.030

Beverly Acuff Momoi: Because I'm not just left with his poem, he invariably will start something in me that will take me down a different direction in terms of reflection on something- Morton Marcus: Which is what all of poetry should do, yeah?

00:45:16.090 - 00:45:28.750

Beverly Acuff Momoi: Exactly. Morton Marcus: Yeah, have you ever read any of his prose books that came out of the University of Michigan Press on poetries? He's got three of them now, I think they are oh, my heavens.

00:45:28.780 - 00:45:37.630

Beverly Acuff Momoi: I've only read a lot of his poetry but I haven't read any- Morton Marcus: Some of his prose is incredible. And he has got a book of aphorisms from his notebooks. They are just

00:45:37.630 - 00:45:53.710

harpoons about the absurdity of what's going on in the literary and political life of this country in this century. They're just so brilliant, but anyways, he's marvelous, Charlie Simic, everyone out there should be aware of him just as a poet also

00:45:53.710 - 00:46:13.150

besides a prose poet, some o our major workman, craftsman poems, and all around good guys Joan Joan Zimmerman: [unintelligible] What I'll read from is from Stephen Mitchell's book, "Parables and Portraits," and

00:46:13.240 - 00:46:31.990

Mitchell, of course, has done so many wonderful translations. And so a few years ago, when I saw a book of something that he'd written and I picked it up, it turned out to be prose poems. It was in fact my first encounter ith prose poems. A lot of these

00:46:31.990 - 00:46:49.480

re funny, which is why I like hem. So this one is called: SAINT INEPTUS Born in third century Illyria, he soon established a reputation for spilling his food, bruising himself, and tripping over

00:46:49.480 - 00:47:07.480

non-existent objects in the street. His parents wanted him to become a doctor in the hope that the rigorous training would make him more attentive. But he refused. Instead, he spent his time looking for angels in the dark alleyways of his native

00:47:07.480 - 00:47:26.530

town, and feeding the stray cats. Even his martyrdom was botched. He felt so terrified as the wild beasts approached him in the amphitheater, that he forgot the words of the Lord's Prayer. He has become the patron saint of the clumsy, the

00:47:26.530 - 00:47:44.710

tactless, and the unqualified, they were instructed to leave a candle burning for him once a month, making sure that there is nothing flammable in the vicinity. His intercession is said to do more good than harm.

00:47:46.660 - 00:48:02.900

So that was Stephen Mitchell. Morton Marcus: Interesting, until you showed me that book, I had not thought he had done anything except translations. Joan Zimmerman: That's my actual personal patron saint, Mort.

00:48:09.410 - 00:48:22.640

Morton Marcus: This is a poem, I'm gonna read a few of these because some of them are so short. And I just really think that he is an amazing prose poet. This is a book that won the Juniper Award several years ago. So talking about awards,

00:48:22.640 - 00:48:39.440

books that are out there, and this is Vern Rutsala, again, a poet who does not particularly write the prose poem all the time. And this is just about the collection of all of them in fact, in "Little-Known Sports." This is called:

00:48:39.470 - 00:48:52.230

THE PAPERCLIP We persist in baiting this dull hook with page after page, yet we catch nothing. That's all.

00:48:55.260 - 00:49:08.600

ANSWERING THE TELEPHONE This sport is akin to gymnastics, relying as it does on strength and grace. The form to be followed is relatively simple, assuming one has the strength and requisite character

00:49:08.600 - 00:49:24.440

to stay in training. The exercise itself is initiated at random, i.e. when the phone rings. Thus, what in golf is called, an outside agency, is fundamental. The player must then be prepared for the ring at all times, which is rather

00:49:24.440 - 00:49:38.420

harrowing, especially when compared to the thoroughly orderly procedures of gymnastics. Nevertheless, the random factor is the true test of the player's alertness. Following the ring, the performer's movements may be

00:49:38.420 - 00:49:53.840

freestyle, as long as the phone is lifted accurately indefinitely from the cradle, and, with minimal motion, raised to the correct position. The end with a wire must be in the vicinity of the mouth. The exercise is completed when the

00:49:53.840 - 00:50:06.540

athlete says, "Hello." And one more: SMOKING, which he does, and which is no longer politically correct, but he smokes like a fiend.

00:50:08.070 - 00:50:22.650

Like cockfighting or pit bull contests, this is rapidly becoming an outlaw sport, though many still engage in it rather openly and with a certain nervous bravado. There are some as well, who practice it surreptitiously in forbidden

00:50:22.650 - 00:50:41.120

rooms and elevators, taunting the law with disdain. Others practice it in private as single consenting adults. Very, very witty guy, amazing poet. And some of you have listened to the show off and on would know he's appeared here

00:50:41.120 - 00:50:51.890

several times, the Selected Poems are out now. Really a fine American writer who I don't think has been given nearly the attention he should have been given. Beverly, we're back to you.

00:50:52.860 - 00:51:14.610

Beverly Acuff Momoi: I just changed my mind. I think I'm going to read a poem by a poet, a Minnesota poet, who is also a good friend of mine, and who writes a lot of prose poems. Again, not exclusively, but Deborah, her name is Deborah

00:51:14.610 - 00:51:30.720

Keenan. This particular poem is from, "The Only Window That Counts," which is not her most recent book, her most recent book is called, "Happiness." And this is the last poem in the book, and it's called:

00:51:30.720 - 00:51:47.320

GREENLAND MUMMY The best preserved of all the Greenland mummies is the baby boy mummy. He died quickly at six months of age. The snow is bad, his blanket, his death, so intact he takes the breath of

00:51:47.320 - 00:52:06.220

the archaeologists. Two white shells, lower teeth, cornsilk for hair, his tiny gloves, little blue starfish in the snow. I make so much up. Haven't the time to study properly. I read two pages, pronounce a novelist psychotic. I read one

00:52:06.220 - 00:52:21.880

paragraph and no more than I ever wanted to know about the Greenland mummies. The baby mummy wasn't wearing gloves, no shells, no cornsilk, a baby not a doll. He was given to the snow after his mother died, so he couldn't wear gloves or the

00:52:21.880 - 00:52:39.160

beautiful red overalls, or the soft ear skin-cap with earflaps. I made all that up when I was painting the baby mummy. I made it up so he would be warm. Given to the snow because his mother died. The old rules hurt, not that the new rules are ideal.

00:52:39.700 - 00:52:54.130

When the mother died in Greenland so many hundreds of years ago, then her baby was put outside to die and he became the best mummy, the one the scientists love the best, because his little body froze so quickly, more quickly than the

00:52:54.130 - 00:53:09.370

grown up mummies and teenage mummies who died with their clothes on. It is good he froze so quickly, because the scientists are able to learn more from his tiny body. It is good to freeze quickly when your mother dies. It is good the rule

00:53:09.370 - 00:53:24.580

was so clear. No aunts, no best friends of the mother may take the child. It is good to sleep in the snow when your mother dies. Maybe your aunt wouldn't love you enough. Maybe your mother's best friend would love her own baby more. Who thought

00:53:24.580 - 00:53:39.010

of such a dramatic rule in a country named Greenland? Who thought of Greenland anyway? That name of life, that huge island, and who thought of digging for mummies in the first place? I don't know those answers. I don't read much

00:53:39.010 - 00:53:53.950

lately except what's assigned or what I struggled to see beyond the veil of tiredness. The baby wakes me up at night and I can't get back to sleep. I'm sitting outside his door, my back straight against the doorframe. I'm listening to each ragged

00:53:53.950 - 00:54:09.460

breath he takes this month. I don't read much because of the baby. The baby's why I make things up. I love being in the middle of the night with him. We watch the news or old Dave DeVan(?) movies. We watched Hawaii, saw the circle of white,

00:54:09.490 - 00:54:24.940

the halo around Julie Andrews' head after she screamed and pulled on the tied in knots bedsheet and had her first baby. That is the first scene I ever remember seeing of childbirth. Later a baby is put in the beautiful ocean to drown. I turn

00:54:24.940 - 00:54:40.630

the TV off then because Joy was falling asleep. I wouldn't have let them watch that scene anyway. The snow is almost gone from our backyard. My daughter made a mermaid without a face with purple yarn hair. Only the hair and the last part of the

00:54:40.630 - 00:54:56.200

flipping tale remain. My daughter wants to be a mermaid when she grows up. Our baby will never sleep in the snow. I won't even let him go winter camping even if it's the only way he can win merit badges in the Boy Scouts. The baby will keep a

00:54:56.200 - 00:55:11.560

Snuggie on and his blue mittens from aunt Peggy and his dark blues snow suit from Jean. And his harlequin socks from Pat and Tom, and the baby will sleep indoors always unless we move to the tropics. The Greenland baby mummy has a beautiful and

00:55:11.560 - 00:55:27.940

haunting face. I keep thinking of him, his small face, how he would fit in the hands and arms and heart of his mother who died. I've been in mourning for children all over the world since our baby was born six months ago. The news from China,

00:55:27.970 - 00:55:44.830

Africa, Lebanon, you can't send money fast enough, you can't melt the snow fast enough, or turn down the sun, or grow the crops, or stop the bombs fast enough. Our new baby has done his job well, the job all babies are assigned. He has broken open

00:55:44.830 - 00:56:01.300

my heart for the third time in my life. He has made me think of all these babies: alive, dead, and dying. This is the work of babies. That is why there's no time to read, why I make everything up as I go along. They are searching for more

00:56:01.300 - 00:56:14.800

Greenland mummies, the group graves are confusing to the archaeologists, so they hope they find more single graves. If they're lucky, they will stumble across another Greenland mummy baby. They hope the next one they find will have died even

00:56:14.800 - 00:56:31.030

faster than the first. They long for what the snow does to babies. That part may be wrong. They may have left Greenland by now. I will not be going to Greenland this year, I carry the picture of the baby mummy deep in me. Like something I

00:56:31.030 - 00:56:48.250

swallowed that has nothing to do with food. One paragraph, one picture is enough. Our baby is sleeping right now. He is warm, getting over his ailments of the last month. He is the light in our house. Someday I will tell him all these stories: the sad

00:56:48.250 - 00:57:01.750

ones, the famines, the girl children left out to die. And the happy ones: the mermaid in the backyard, the women who love him, the gifts they've given. I'm glad winter is ending, and that the snow is almost gone.

00:57:02.910 - 00:57:13.050

Joan Zimmerman: Say the name of the author again, Bev? That's Deborah Keenan. That's a wonderful poem. Beverly Acuff Momoi: It is. She writes wonderful prose poems.

00:57:13.620 - 00:57:30.720

And this particular poem, as I said, it's the last poem in her collection, "The Only Window That Counts." And it has a bit o a story in that she had finishe the collection, and th publisher said it wasn' finished. And then this poem wa

00:57:30.720 - 00:57:47.030

written and it's one of my favorite poems, but she has many wonderful ones. I wanted to read it because there is that rhythm in it. It's a very hypnoti - Joan Zimmerman: Right, a lot of repetition of words and

00:57:48.560 - 00:58:01.400

re-occurrence of ideas and returning back, and the continual, returning back to the coldness. Beverly Acuff Momoi: And it's very different from the other points we've been reading here. And I wanted to again show that

00:58:01.400 - 00:58:16.400

the prose form can take many forms. And I can't imagine this being written in anything but prose. Joan Zimmerman: Because, do you have a because? Beverly Acuff Momoi: I think it is that long breath, a

00:58:16.430 - 00:58:27.530

continuous line that doesn't stop. And yet, I couldn't call this anything other than a poem. Joan Zimmerman: Right. Beverly Acuff Momoi: This is not a story or fiction, this is a

00:58:27.530 - 00:58:41.780

poem for me. Morton Marcus: The idea of the long breath is really what does it, this does have a narrative line, you know, it's again, moving those two things moving against each other. Joan?

00:58:43.280 - 00:59:03.380

Joan Zimmerman: Yes, if I could read a poem from the second book of prose poems that I came across. This is from Robert Bly's book, "What Have I Ever Lost by Dying?" And Bly's poetry I pretty much hate, actually, when I read it. But when I hear

00:59:03.380 - 00:59:22.430

him reading, the poetry takes on its own life, and what I finally realized is he can't write poetry, but he can write prose poems. And when he finally writes them, his prose poems, I can read them in the book the way that he reads them, or I

00:59:22.430 - 00:59:44.540

think the way that they sound to me when he reads them. So this is called, "Warning to the Reader." And in fact, it relates in a sense to the poem that I've just read because very often in poetry we we write about love and light and sweetness. But

00:59:45.290 - 00:59:56.120

that poem, whilst it got a lot of love and light in it, it has such darkness in it, it had both the light and the darkness. Okay, WARNING TO THE READER

00:59:57.290 - 01:00:16.880

Sometimes farm granaries become especially beautiful when all the oats or wheat are gone, and wind has swept the rough floor clean. Standing inside we see around us, coming in through the cracks between shrunken wallboards, bands or strips of

01:00:16.880 - 01:00:44.030

sunlight. So in a poem about imprisonment, one sees a little light. But how many birds have died trapped in these granaries. The birds see the bands of light, flutter up the walls and fall back again and again. The way out is where the rats enter

01:00:44.060 - 01:01:11.600

and leave, but the rat's hole is low to the floor. Writers, be careful then by showing the sunlight on the walls not to promise the anxious and panicky blackbirds a way out! I say to the reader, beware. Readers who love poems of light may sit

01:01:11.600 - 01:01:33.830

hunched in the corner with nothing in their gizzards for four days, light failing, the eyes glazed, they may end as a mound of feathers and a skull on the open boardwood floor. Morton Marcus: And we are winding down here. Let me just

01:01:35.630 - 01:01:48.350

say a few words. We've been discussing the prose poem tonight. And I'm going to end by reading some of the person I think is really the most influential of all writers on the prose poem, the man has been dedicated to the prose poem for

01:01:48.350 - 01:02:03.170

the last thirty years. But before I do that, I want to mention some other American prose poem writers for people out there. That is W.S. Merwin, who did a book called, "The Miner's Pale Children," a very, very important book in the 60s.

01:02:03.350 - 01:02:15.520

Beverly Acuff Momoi: Also, "Houses and Travelers." Morton Marcus: "Houses and Travelers," recently, yeah, that volume is very hard to get. It seemed to have gone like that, an amazing American poet. The prose poems of James Wright,

01:02:15.590 - 01:02:32.210

having the latter part of his life also very, very important. David Ignatow, has been writing for the last twenty years, some interesting poems. One of my favorites, Jack Anderson, wrote a poem called, "The Invention of New Jersey," and whom, "The

01:02:32.280 - 01:02:47.230

Party Train," is named after one of his prose poems. He's tremendously winning an original, and an old man, probably now dead, who's more a storyteller of unique proportions, and a prose poet and that is Spencer Holst, who

01:02:47.290 - 01:03:03.580

wrote a book called, "The Bears Dancing in Moonlight," an amazing piece that I will read on this show, and some other pieces. I may do a whole show on Spencer Holst. And then just to tell you places to do it, if you're interested in the prose

01:03:03.650 - 01:03:19.940

poem, there is a prose poem magazine called "The Prose Poem: An International Journal." Write to Peter Johnson, he's the editor. And it is the Providence College, Providence, Rhode Island, you can get the zip for that. In issue number four, I

01:03:20.010 - 01:03:35.700

did a long review of the person I think is the most important prose poet for the last thirty years, a person who doggedly writes this stuff and is just one of the most uniquely original writers of American English and that is Russell

01:03:35.760 - 01:03:45.350

Edson. And I'll end by reading a few poems of Russell Edson. But before I do that, let me- yes, go on. Beverly Acuff Momoi: Could I make a request that you read one of your poems?

01:03:45.780 - 01:04:02.250

Morton Marcus: We don't have time. But let me tell you some other people out there whose prose poems you should know if you're interested, try to take these writers down. Juan Ramon Jimenez, who's written some just wonderful pure prose poems,

01:04:02.250 - 01:04:22.530

period, but whose book, "Platero and I," is one of the wisest, most beautiful books, the story of Juan and his donkey are just amazing pieces of prose poetry, they really make up virtually a novel of the short experience he has with his donkey, who is

01:04:22.530 - 01:04:39.060

symbolic of around ten thousand things, very much reminds me of, if you could write a haiku in Spanish with Spanish romantic tendencies. Jorge Luis Borges, marvelous stuff, I was going to read some tonight, we don't have time. Henri Michaux, the first

01:04:39.060 - 01:04:56.700

great influence on me. The New Directions book, translated by Richard Hellman, still the one to get amazing collection of poems. Francis Ponge, Jean Follain, Julio Cortazar, the great Argentina writer also, Franz Kafka, you should not stop

01:04:56.970 - 01:05:13.980

reading Kafka's parables, Kafka's riddles, they're very important to the whole movement. Italo Calvino, yeah, he's a great prose poet but what he can do in language is amazing, and one book, "Invisible Cities," is incredible. It will blow the top

01:05:13.980 - 01:05:30.690

of your head off. Zbigniew Herbert, the Polish poet, Tomas Transtromer, the Swedish one. And here, before Billie comes in, is just some stuff with Russell Edson. And as I point out, these things are so crazy because he just moves wherever

01:05:30.690 - 01:05:47.010

the language takes him. And sometimes they're just jokes, sometimes they're much more. He always is dealing though with a basic idea of family, the basic idea of archetypal myth. So just listen to this one very short called:

01:05:47.040 - 01:06:03.390

PARENTAL DECISION A man splits into two who are an old woman and an old man. They must be his parents, but where is the man? Perhaps he gave his life for them. I asked the old couple if they've seen their

01:06:03.390 - 01:06:16.710

son. The old woman says, "We decided not to have any children." Joan Zimmerman: [chuckle] Morton Marcus: You know, there is the old, there's a new one by

01:06:16.710 - 01:06:26.490

him, there's the old thing at the end of Shakespeare's play: a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse which is Richard the Third. But here is: THE TASTE OF HORSE by Russell Edson as he takes off on this

01:06:26.640 - 01:06:36.750

with his language. It was Henry the Third who said he was so hungry he could eat a horse, crying, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse." So a guardsman killed his horse and threw it on a fire and fed

01:06:36.750 - 01:06:50.340

it to the king and he said, "Did you feed me a horse?" "Yes, Sire. You said you were so hungry, you could eat a horse." "But only figuratively. Now I'm all full of horse! Did I eat the hooves?" "Yes, Sire. The mane, the tail and all, too." "Did it

01:06:50.340 - 01:07:04.840

taste good?" "I don't know, Sire. You ate the whole thing." "But it was your horse. If a guardsman doesn't know what his horse tastes like, who does?" And that's on that note we are saying so long. Good night. Stay

01:07:04.840 - 01:07:12.640

tuned for "Book Before Bedtime." Joan Zimmerman: it is a wonderful show.